A state channels domestic religious zeal outward to protect its own rule.

Evidence

Saudi rulers and clerics also encouraged those who might otherwise have criticized Saudi rulers for not enforcing Wahhabi teachings within the kingdom to fight outside of it against other Muslim-led governments, militias, or parties – a policy that has been described as one of “obedience at home and rebellion abroad” (al-Rasheed 2008a). … In turn, the Wahhabi clerical establishment emphasized that it was not generally permissible to declare a Muslim ruler to be an apostate, thereby repudiating the position of Sayyid Qut˙b and other radical Islamists that it had once embraced as long as the Muslim rulers in question were not Saudi. But their reasoning was a cold form of reassurance for the House of Saʿu¯d. A Muslim ruler could only be declared an apostate if he deliberately enacted laws that were not God’s law, Saudi clerics explained. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1904

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s central research question about manufactured external enemies sustaining in-group solidarity while deflecting internal challenge — parallels internal/external scapegoating-surplus aggression dynamics the Frankfurt School described, and diversionary-war theory in international relations. — connects to: A secular state co-opted and thereby financed its own religious opposition; The state has taken the place of God as sovereign — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 197; Mere religiosity triggers US state suspicion apart from any political dissent — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 83 (+7 more)
• SEED: Angle: ‘obedience at home, rebellion abroad’ as a generic elite survival strategy — export the radicalism you cannot contain domestically; essay comparing the Saudi case to how states co-opt revolutionary energies by redirecting them at foreign foes.

Broader Connections

• A secular state co-opted and thereby financed its own religious opposition #complicates (0.85)
• A pacifist religion has been harnessed to an ethnocentric state ideology. #exemplifies (0.85)
• Secular government functions as a continuation of religious authority by other means #expands (0.82) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 564
• The state exploits public insecurity to legitimize Islamophobia. #exemplifies (0.82) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 441
• Mere religiosity triggers US state suspicion apart from any political dissent #exemplifies (0.78) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 83
• The state has taken the place of God as sovereign #complicates (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 197
• Egyptian state secularism regulates religious practice into state-endorsed forms #qualifies (0.75) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 533
• The nation-state’s power claim drives Islamism’s focus on the state. #complicates (0.75)